The initial cell timing synchronization is a critical and necessary step in decoding OFDM downlink transmissions in a OFDM mobile terminal, such as in the proposed long term evolution (LTE) standard of the 3GPP. Systems operating under this proposed standard are often termed Super3G networks.
The conventional method of acquiring the cell timing is to use a cell synchronization channel of the network. In this process, the mobile terminal knows the structure of the synchronization channel, and derives all other system parameters (for example, scrambling code and the number of used carriers) by decoding the synchronization channel. Since the synchronization channel is transmitted infrequently, the detection takes relatively long time.